N. B.-The items in the foregoing Tables are extracted from Returns made by the correspondents of the various Schools enumerated, in answer to questions addressed to them. It could not, perhaps, be expected that the answers should agree in form sufficiently to admit of tabularization. But it was deemed useful to supply the information which these answers contain relative to the position of Elementary Schools in various parts of the country, and it is expected that the nature of these inquiries will be better appreciated by the parties to whom they are addressed after they are seen thus reduced to a tabular form.

The returns from which the above table has been extracted, show 32 schools in which the expenditure is stated to exceed the income, without accounting for the deficiency. In 284 returns the deficiency of income with regard to the expenditure, is stated to be covered by charitable individuals. In but 144 schools is the income stated to exceed the expenditure, and in 68 schools the expenditure is barely covered by the income.

No account of income or expenditure has been returned by 141 schools.

The assistance of the Committee of Council on Education has, within the short period that has elapsed since the publication of the Minutes relating to Pupil Teachers, (up to 30th June 1848) been sought by 517 schools in England, and by 1,437 teachers and pupil teachers. In these schools the sum of £20,664* has been granted. A further grant of £5,013 has been made in augmentation of the salaries of such Schoolmasters as have obtained a certificate of merit. Thirty-eight pupil teachers have been apprenticed in 10 schools in Scotland with annual grants amounting to £551. The average cost of education in 519 schools in England, which have made complete returns, is £1. Os. 71d. per head That in 20 schools in Wales averages 12s. 1d. per child. In Scotland the average charge is 12s. 9d. per child per annum.

per annum.

* These amounts have been corrected to the 1st Oct. for the information of such schools as have, or have not complied with the requisitions contained in the Minutes of the Committee of Council. The sum stated in the folio volume is £26,242 10s., as granted in gratuities to teachers, and in augmentation of salaries where certificates of merit have been obtained.

APPENDIX.

INSPECTORS' REPORTS.

Report for the Fear 1847, on Schools inspected in the Southern District, comprising the Counties of Hants, Wilts, and Berks; by Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, the Rev. HENRY MOSELEY, M.A., F.R.S., Corresponding Member of the National Institute of France, and lately Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, in King's College, London.

MY LORDS,

THE schools under Inspection in Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Berkshire, forming the Southern District, are 292 in number. Of these schools, 117 have received your Lordships' grants; 53, those administered by the Lords of the Treasury; and 102, have invited inspection not having received any public grant.

The following table exhibits the numbers in which these different classes of schools are distributed through the three counties of my district.

I commenced the inspection of these schools in the month of March, and continued it until the end of May, when, by your Lordships' authority, the periodical Inspection of schools was discontinued; and I have since devoted to the examination of such schools as applied for the appointment of pupil teachers, under the provisions of your " Recent Minutes," the time left to me by the discharge of other duties.

66

Number of Schools

and Children.

Statistics of the Schools.

The whole number of schools in the Southern District, whether of boys, girls, or infants, which, under these circumstances, I have inspected, is 134, they are situated in 88 different localities; and I found 6213 children assembled in them, of whom 3342 were boys and 2872 girls.

The following table contains the results of an inquiry I have made as to the ages of the children in 75 of these schools:

Under 7 Years

of Age.

Between 7 and 8.

Cent.

1,035 945 801 587 386 193 87 45

7,549

0.6 15.36 13.7 12.5

From this table, it appears that very nearly one-half of the children in these schools were under eight years of age, and that out of every 100 children 82 were under 11 years of age, and 60

of these under 9 years.

Religious Knowledge.

I had scarcely entered upon my duties when, by the operation of the "Recent Minutes," they were limited to schools which sought the appointment of pupil teachers, and they have since left me in ignorance of all others. Of the state of education generally in the Southern District I am not therefore competent to speak.

spe

With reference to the schools that I have visited, I can bear testimony to great activity and zeal on the part of all persons connected with them to promote the education of the children; but it would be an injustice not to record that this remark is cially, and in peculiar manner, applicable to the parochial clergy, by whose voluntary contributions the schools are in this, as in other agricultural districts, chiefly, and sometimes wholly maintained, and to whose laborious teaching, in the dearth and paucity of other duly instructed teachers, they not unfrequently owe whatever of efficiency they may be found to possess.

If I have been more struck by this circumstance in my recent than in any previous tour of inspection, I am disposed to attribute

"

it to the support which the cause of education has received from the Lord Bishop of the diocese, to the influence of your Lordships' "Recent Minutes," and to the exertions of my predecessor, Archdeacon Allen.

The labours of the clergy are, of course, chiefly limited to the instruction of the children in Religious knowledge, and if Religious knowledge constituted a Religious education, there are some of the schools I have visited in which those who are the best friends of education, and seek its highest results, could have little left to desire.

In not less than 100 of these schools out of 134 I believe, however, that the children are taught to read, mechanically, from the Scriptures, the sacred volume itself being used for that purpose, or parts extracted from it. I have nowhere found this constant reading of the Scriptures associated with real scriptural knowledge, except where, in addition to this, the Scriptures are made the subject of a special course of instruction. It is a result, indeed, to which the learning to read mechanically from the Scriptures does not appear at all to contribute, but the reverse. Ideas of the same class presented incessantly to the mind under the same circumstances lose at length their interest, and the repetition of them, instead of strengthening the impression they leave, tends (a certain limit being passed) to confuse it. It is consistent with my own experience, and I believe with that of all other Inspectors, that there is most religious knowledge in those schools where the reading of the Scriptures is united in a just proportion with secular instruction, and where a distinction between the functions of the day-school and the Sunday-school being observed, something of that relation is established in the school between religious principles and secular pursuits which ought to obtain in the after-life of the child.

That is no ordinary sacrifice which is made of the veneration due to the word of God, when it is constantly applied to a secular use. Looking at a religious education as comprising, in its largest sense, the whole result for which we are labouring, it is impossible not to lament that, by an indiscretion which has no parallel in the education we give to our own children, we so associate the use of the Scriptures with the years a labourer's child spends at school as to render the neglect of them a probable result when he leaves it, and that the teaching of the school is, for the most part, so limited to the letter of Scripture as to place the child, by defect of secular knowledge, beyond the reach of that instruction which the Church has afterwards provided for him.*

I am discouraged when I find the opinions of men, whose piety

* Is it to be wondered at if, under these circumstances, the influence of the Church should be felt chiefly among the educated portions of the community, or if localities are to be found where ample means of elementary instruction have long been provided without any sensible effect on the moral or religious condition of the population?